“The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow is an important book. Most models of the development of human society have us moving up an escalator from hunter-gatherers through agriculture to the modern nation state as a result of inexorable human progress. Through a fascinating study, the authors point out that this is a profoundly flawed model. Rejecting both conclusions of Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Graeber and Wengrow find other approaches to understand human society. Along the way, they find the indigenous critique of western European society by Native American Wendat statesman Kandiaronk and his encounters with early French settlers in Canada. From these accounts we can see that in encountering Europeans, many indigenous cultures rejected much of what the Europeans found valuable, and vice versa.

Graeber passed away not long after publication of this book. I often find that many interesting thinkers do pass away after a significant accomplishment. This book presents the notion that early human societies had multiple ways of being organized, and our old models need to be scrapped.

We have to consider that neighboring human societies can develop as opposites out of a rejection of what their neighbors do in a process of schismogenesis. We have to consider what role “chieftainship” must or need play and why we think it is so important. One example that came to my mind, do we really need a president or a presidency? What about the roles of women in ordering society? This varied greatly. What does the division of land among landowners really mean? Does it tie us to gold and laws? What it comes down to is that there is a lot of support for the idea that human societies developed as it suited their situation. Is that still true of the modern nation state? Must it be retained if it is not inexorable?

As for criticisms, this is not the dawn of everything because the historical record is necessarily limited, but it is a new history. It could have been half or twice as long, however, depending on what the authors were trying to accomplish. They had sufficient examples to prove their point.

In the end, it is a valuable contribution to understanding human society.